The Brains Behind Billionaire Homes

The Billionaire in the Home

A client's demands and the architect's vision must strike a perfect balance in order for the house to meet the expectations of the design. Sometimes this balance is achieved through a collaborative process between all parties, but most times, especially in building a billionaire's home, the client has learned to trust that the architect will manage to turn their dream home into a furnished reality.

"The better the client the more creative freedom they give you," Discoe says. And Larry Ellison was one of those clients. According to Discoe, it took fifteen minutes for Ellison to draw what he wanted on a lined piece of paper with a ballpoint pen. "He was very clear and didn't care about the cost or the time. It was ten years from that initial drawing until the full completion of the home."

With all of his billions and no time limit on achieving his housing goals, Ellison demanded the best. As creatively liberating as that is for an architect, the fact that so many economical limitations were thrown out the window placed more emphasis on Discoe's job and the final product.

"There was no compromise, no cutting corners, no financial or time constraints, no pressure only to deliver the best product possible with expert craftsmanship," Discoe says. "With these expectations, there's no one to blame but yourself if something goes wrong."

Fortunately nothing did go wrong. Ellison is satisfied with the home, and Discoe is currently working on a smaller project for Ellison's property next door.

Cutler also takes his client's expectations into careful consideration. To make them part of the process, he closely reads his clients' written requests, and personally walks them through the property and relays his design ideas and thought process regularly. Ultimately, though, Cutler has final word on all the design decisions.

"Each family has a set of needs that they express in their written program. I'm not going to tell them how to live their lives," Cutler says. "They give me the landscape and the budget and then I try to bring all those elements together. This is what we do and how we operate, if they think they can do my job and don't need me, then they shouldn't hire me."

So far, no one has walked away. To this day, Cutler claims 100% satisfaction with his clients, including Gates. But he doesn't talk in detail about that out of "respect for the client's privacy."

Peter Bohlin, who assisted Cutler with architecting the Gates home, and Ron Herman, landscape architect for the Ellison home, expressed the same concern. It is not uncommon for the high profile client to demand to have everyone involved in their housing project not speak with the press due to privacy and security concerns. In fact, a spokesperson at the architectural firm Gwathmey Siegel wouldn't even confirm if it was responsible for Michael Dell's home in Austin, Texas.

Sustainable Approach

One thing Cutler will go into detail about is how the Gates residence incorporates sustainable practices. Cutler Anderson Architects takes an environmentally friendly architectural approach to its projects. Cutler oversaw the use of recycled timber to construct the Gates residence.

"The land is a major client. Designing a home is about choreographing the experience of connecting with the landscape," he says. "When you emotionally connect with the land, you fall in love with it. When people love something, they don't want to kill it. It's about changing attitudes, not just changing our technology."

Discoe has been using urban logs, that have been recycled, in all major construction projects and recently designed a cardboard zendo, which is like a tent for meditation purposes, for the Burning Man, the annual creative arts festival in Nevada. He is, however, critical of the current sustainability movement.

"It's a fun thing to talk about, but you can't pretend to care about sustainability if you drive a car and you fly in planes," he says. "The use of petroleum is reprehensible. While I was in Japan, I came across a small village. Everything they needed they got from a quarter-mile radius, no waste and no imports. That's truly sustainable."

Although sustainability now seems like a modern trend, Lewis explains that an architect's intrinsic knowledge of nature is a centuries' old tradition of the art of design.

"In Japan and in Nordic cultures, trees that grow on the north side of the mountain, tempered by cold wind and shade, are used for the wood to build the north side of the house, and the southern trees that grow in heat and sun are used for the south façade," she says. "The consideration of wind and air circulation, the use of shutters, screens, pivoting and sliding walls, solar infusion, thermal insulation from thick storage walls, sunshading with bris soleil [a shading devices for controlling solar gain and adding stylish features to a building] construction walls" have all been a prevalent part of architecture and represent its inextricable connection to the environment.